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Isolation

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Dryden organization aims to alleviate social isolation for seniors

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A non-profit organization is highlighting the risk of loneliness that many seniors in Dryden cope with everyday.

“Say you live (in an) apartment setting,” says Colleen Hill from Dryden District Senior Services. “You can still feel isolated even though you are surrounded by people.”

Earlier this week, October was proclaimed Seniors Isolation Prevention Month by Mayor Jack Harrison, who encourages all residents to celebrate and engage with Dryden’s senior citizens.

According to a recent report, less than 40 per cent of Canadians aged 50 and older engage in social and recreational activities on a weekly basis, with one in four saying they rarely or never do so.

Hill says Dryden District Senior Services offers several programs that are aimed at providing seniors the assistance, social support and services they often require.

“Our role with our organization is that we try and capture and try to encourage everyone to come to our programs,” says Hill. “We have programming in place to try and prevent isolation in the home.”

Among the services offered by Dryden District Senior Services are adult day programs that provide a group setting for socialization opportunities, respite, as well as support to families and caregivers.

As well, Dryden District Senior Services supports seniors with regular visitation services, whereby a volunteer and client are matched to meet via phone call or in-person visit.

“The key part is matching a volunteer with a client,” notes Lisa Helbling, the adult day and friendly visiting coordinator. “These visits can take place in their homes or they can take them shopping or to community events if they need that support.”

Another important program is Meals on Wheels, which has a dual-function for those who require the service.

“A volunteer will deliver a hot meal to the community member and in that delivery of service, they would provide a bit of a security check,” explains Hill, noting that if concerns arise, volunteers are instructed to report back to Dryden District Senior Services, which could potentially call for a wellness check.

“All of our programs are supported with volunteers,” adds Hill, encouraging anyone interested in helping out to sign up. “(People) can give us a call here at Dryden Senior Services or by email.”

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Praise For Princess Court Staff/Management

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Princess Court in Dryden has found a way to help keep residents safe and busy while keeping them connected to family, loved ones and the community.

Staff member Joy Trenholm says they have created three separate “Waving Trees”, with seniors painting waving hands on the windows at the front of the building.

Trenholm says seniors had a blast working on the project, noting it allows them to say hi to motorists and pedestrians who are passing bye the facility.

She says other measures to help keep seniors active and engaged is virtual Facetime meetings and bringing people down to the ground level to wave through the window.

Trenholm stresses the management deserves nothing but credit for how quickly they acted on COVID-19 before anyone else did.

The home was closed to all visitors on March 13th before it was mandated by the province and staff were immediately screened for the virus.

Home Administrator Pat Berrey says his team is second to none.

“They are an amazing team. They have been working extremely hard to try and keep our residents and staff safe during this unprecedented time.”

Berrey adds “Thank all of our staff for their commitment, their courage, their dedication to serving our residents and working through this pandemic. I must say they have been fantastic and we really do appreciate our staff.”

He notes the “Waving Hand” initiative was a wonderful idea that was initiated and carried out by workers at the facility.

“The residents love to be engaged in doing things throughout the home. This is just another example of the creative abilities of our staff.”

Berrey stresses they continue to explore ways to protect residents and practice physical distancing.

He points out in a letter sent to families “We are doing our best to protect the residents under our care. We have re-aligned our Activation staff to spend more one on one time with the residents and provide physically distanced small group activities on the units. We understand that the residents are anxious and feeling somewhat isolated throughout this difficult time.”